Anemoia: Nostalgia for a Time You’ve Never Been - Greek
Wandering the mysterious shadows of the human psyche that cause the longing for the impossible, the unreachable; and our best possible choice
The readers' all-time favorite of Words of the World is the one about Moledro, a Portuguese word meaning the feeling of connection with an author or artist you’ll never meet. A quite familiar feeling for me, but observing that so many people share this semi-innocent and semi-sinful feeling was intriguing.
This was again a kind of proof that humankind prefers the unreachable to the closest. The difficult to the simpler. The impossible to the probable.
The new word is also about our desire to approach the impossible. I don’t claim to reach or pass the read rate of Moledro, and I don’t write this piece with such a goal even in my deepest feelings, but as soon as I saw the word, Moledro’s past thoughts emerged in my mind.
Anemoia is a Greek word meaning the psychology behind the nostalgia for a time you’ve never been. This word is one of those from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which describes anemoia as follows:
Ancient Greek ἄνεμος (ánemos), wind + νόος (nóos), mind. Compare anemosis, which occurs when a tree is warped by strong air currents until it seems to bend backward, leaning into the wind. Pronounced “an-uh-moi-uh.”
Having this opportunity, I would like to introduce you to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, which is a valuable source of many special words about mutual feelings in the human psyche. I love to read it from time to time to remember our vulnerability, darkness, and deepest needs as the little creatures struggling to pretend giants.
When it’s totally possible to knock down even the strongest of us with an appropriate emotional hit, how absurd is it to claim to be the unbeatable one? Anemoia alone can prove this reality.
We have strong desires and needs like a vulnerable child. Nobody will manage to satisfy our exhausting requests. We tend to miss times that we have never experienced because we are so desperate about being satisfied some day and somehow feeling fully content with the life we’re given on Earth. If there is nothing shading our happy moments, the existence of death is floating as a blanket in the sky, preventing the absolute shine of ever-lasting sunny days.
The disappointment of the unchangeable knowledge of being mortal is over any other piece of happiness. That is why we are pursuing the impossible. We long for what is not within our grasp and seek what can never be attained.
When it comes to my personal anemoia, I would like to experience the Renaissance time in Italy, a time when art and enlightenment were at the highest point in history, and I would like to be able to be in all this art production. The brightest point in history.
I could have been a lucky apprentice of Michelangelo or a child observing and trying to imitate him. Or, given that I like to experience art through words, I could have been a writer living that period.
Yet, I believe we are at one of the luckiest points in history. In the present period it is possible to learn and produce almost without limits, to share what we produce with others, and to express ourselves in every way possible. Of course, a thousand kinds of evils and misfortunes will come to mind, like wars and inequalities, globalization ans the ultimate kingdom of money, but those are the consequences of the collective choices of human kind, unbridled ambition of humanity caused by refusing the need of absolute preference of the truth and virtues in any circumstance, for the sake of anyone without discriminating between strong or weak.
The human psyche does not really change and will not change in the future, so there has never been a better time, nor will there be a better time in the future. A glance at history books will prove that.
Our best possible choice is to make the best of what we have.
I wish you a great week, a wonderful piece of time, shining in your table of life.
— Gulsun
We are made of stories—that is, of words.
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A lovely concept and a lovely word! It was a new one for me